"The Boy in the Striped Pajamas"

Bruno (Asa Butterfield) is 8 years old, the son of a high ranking Nazi offer, living in Berlin. In Bruno's world, the war is a distant rumor that barely threatens Germany's brave new world. Under the protective watch of his mother (Vera Farmiga), Bruno knows only peace and playfulness.

When his father (David Thewlis) is transferred to a new post in the country, Bruno and his sister reluctantly, obligingly go along. Bruno's father speaks of family harmony and unity. He's a seemingly nice father, dutiful and loyal, who happens to wear the black-and-silver skull of Nazi's dreaded Waffen-SS on his collar.

So the family moves to a nice house in a serene setting. On a distant hillside, a fenced farm occasionally belches black smoke that "smells funny." Bruno wants to explore, but he is forbidden.

The thing about 8-year-olds? They usually find a way.

"The Boy in the Striped Pajamas," based on John Boyne's 2006 novel, is a stylishly filmed, oddly poetic story about innocence and its eventual surrender. It is, of course, a microcosmic glimpse of the Holocaust as seen from a naive, possibly unique perspective. I suppose how one is able to view the Holocaust is how one will viscerally react to this film.

There are those who may see the film as sympathetic to Nazi Germany (although I believe that perspective misses the point). Yes, this is a film about the Holocaust, but at its most personal level, it's about a single child's loss of innocence. I believe it indelibly etches into one's psyche the incomprehensibility of war, and in that regard it utterly succeeds.

All I really want to discuss is the ending. I can't, of course—except to say that it is enigmatically necessary and unwarranted, essential but bewildering, probably historically inaccurate in a multitude of ways. Yet, as a parable, as a glimpse of war's impersonal and persistent insanity, it is crucial.

A final note: Although the film is about an 8yearold boy—ultimately about 8-year-old friends— it is not a film intended for younger viewers. It may indeed be an essential family film (for older teens), but only a family film in the truest sense, to be talked about and mulled afterwards. Because it is a film that should be talked about, the next moment or the next day or the next week—perhaps the essence of great drama. And I do believe "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" to be an essential film.